Love My Country, Loathe My Government: deductibles

Showing posts with label deductibles. Show all posts

Sunday, May 27, 2018

May,2018, Part, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Broken Mediciad System, Higher Costs and Lower Quality, and Trump's Simple Yet Elegant Solution

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) In our last Obama Care disaster post, we discussed the reality of ow Obama Care has led to the destruction and heartbreak of the Medicaid program. By overwhelming the Medicaid program with able bodied Obama Care patients, perhaps upwards of 21,000 American Medicaid patients died as they waited on Medicaid waiting lists to get the health care they desperately needed. Thus, a program (Obama Care) that was supposed t5o make Americans healthier actually hastened the death of at least some folks.

But a National Review article recently listed out the ways that Medicaid could be fixed to actually serve those it was originally designed for (the disabled, the blind, the elderly poor, etc.) and not be a dumping ground for Obama Care abled-bodied adults:

States that expanded Medicaid under Obama Care should stop wasting limited resources on able bodied adults coming into the program under Obama Care.
Current enrollees would be able to stay on Medicaid but would be rolled off once their incomes rise enough to exceed Medicaid’s income thresholds, freeing up more resources for the truly needy.
One way of stopping new states from expanding Medicaid to able bodied adults would be to eliminate the funding that these additionally able bodied adults would get from the Federal taxpayer, i.e. if a state wanted to expand Medicaid then that state and its taxpayers would pick up the entire tab.
Medicaid rules should be changed to force able bodied adults currently on Medicaid to get a job to reduce the government’s cost of Medicaid for these able bodied adults.
Anti-fraud efforts should be stepped up to recover and prevent the billions of Medicaid dollars lost every year to fraud and criminal activity within the program.
For example, a recent inspector general report found that Federal taxpayers spent definitely more than $628 million on about 366,000 ineligible Medicaid recipients just in California alone and just in California’s Obama Care expansion alone.
Imagine how much more waste goes on across the country if $628 million exists solely in a fraction of California’s Medicaid population.
But the California situation is likely worse since that same report found that another 70.055 California Obama Care expansion Medicaid patients were “potentially ineligible” which could cost taxpayers upwards of another $402 million, meaning that a billion dollars in waste in just a subset of California Medicaid patients.
Maybe some of that wasted billion dollars could have saved the 384 California Medicaid patients that died while on the waiting list for medical care in that state.

What a mess that can be fixed but which Obama and Obama Care never cared about fixing. It is like they took a broken down, 50 year old pick up truck that was designed to two two tons and decided it could tow 4 tons without any new enhancements to it. As a result, the program wastes more taxpayer money than ever, it provides a low level of medical care, and it has helped kill upwards of 21,000 Americans. Truly an unfolding disaster.

2) David Thornton, writing for the Maven website recently explained how as we get closer and closer to the 2019 Obama Care sign up season, costs for Obama Care policies, as they do every year, are going to jump up again in cost:

The state of Maryland is one of the first states that has proposed new insurance rates for 2019 available and those rates for Obama Care like individual insurance policies are seeing an average rate increase request from insurance companies of a whopping 32%.
The proposed increases for the state range from 18% to 91%.
And as always, insurance policy customers, both Obama Care policies,and employer policies, will show higher deductibles and co-pays going forward into 2019 despite the many promises Obama made about Obama Care “bending the cost curve” or a typical American family saving upwards of $2,500 a year on their insurance costs.
This last point was highlighted by a real life example of the writer: “There are also hidden limitations that you only find out about when you have a claim. As an example, my wife had to go to the hospital in an ambulance last year. Six months after her hospital stay, we received a bill from the ambulance service asking us to pay more than $4,000 for a 30-minute ride. When I followed up with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, our insurance company, I was told that the ambulance service was out-of-network. When I pressed further, I found that Blue Cross did not have any ambulance providers in their network in the entire state of Texas. As a result, Blue Cross paid less than $1,000 on a total claim of more than $5,000.”

Higher costs, lower quality, the hallmarks of Obama Care.

3) Let’s finish up with a good news/bad news Obama Care situation:

According to a recent Breitbart article by Rhona White, a recent study from Avalere Health estimated that 3.2 million Americans will drop their Obama Care policies in the coming years.
This is good news because of an executive order Donald Trump signed that made it easier for people to get better and less expensive health insurance coverage from so-called Association Health Plans (AHP).
An AHP is a health insurance plan that is sponsored and populated by people in an industry, trade, or professional association that pools their buying power to negotiate and get better health insurance costs from insurance companies.
According to Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, “Consumers are always looking for a new low-cost health insurance option but migration of healthy people to a new product will ultimately take a toll on what is presently being sold in the market.”
The Avalere study estimates that those that drop Obama Care policies and join an AHP insurance poll will save about $9,700 a year on average vs. a policy they could get in the private insurance market.\
So the good news is that millions of Americans will save thousands and thousands of dollars a year in insurance costs. The bad news, according to Chris Sloan, senior manager at Avalere, “The proposed rule would lead to millions of individuals and small businesses shifting into a new form of coverage, likely reducing their premiums, but leading to higher premiums in the markets they leave behind.”

That means that there will be fewer and fewer Obama Care policy holders which will put pressure on the insurance companies to raise rates over as smaller and likely less healthy base which will drive more people out of Obama Care policies which will cause the insurance companies to raise rates….and the Obama Care death spiral continues.

All of which raises a good point: why didn’t Obama just do this eight years ago, allowing people to more easily join an AHP? It may have allowed millions and millions of Americans to get lower cost health insurance many years ago without all of the hassles, bureaucracy, and failures of Obama Care? Another example where government and politicians’ “solutions” made a bad situation worse.

That will do it for the unfolding disasters of Obama Care for this month: a Medicaid system in much need of reform, higher healthcare costs and lower quality, and a simple solution that Obama Care completely missed. More next month as the disasters keep on coming.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Monday, February 19, 2018

February, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Americans Being Really Screwed by Obama Care

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care. To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

As we often do each month, we finish our latest discussions about the unfolding disasters of Obama Care with real life stories and tragedies of real life America families. Higher premiums, higher deductibles, more narrow networks, etc. The source of these heartbreaking stories and realities can be found at:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

RON, MONTANA: Ron Cole, Montana Peterbilt Controller, doesn’t see the benefits outlined in the PPACA. "I see it as increasing costs than more than helping from an employer's standpoint,” says Cole. With new provisions from the IRS taking effect in 2014, including a ban on pre-existing condition exclusions, Montana Peterbilt isn’t sure it will keep offering health care, if costs rise. "All that stuff is going to cost money and all that is going to drive up the insurance costs and it may get to where it’s going to price insurance companies out of the market,” says Cole.

STACIE. GEORGIA: From Kaiser Health News:

Even some people who qualify for federal assistance, such as Stacie Brown, owner of a pottery shop, are balking. The cheapest "bronze" plan for Brown, her husband and son would cost the family $300 a month but not begin paying medical bills until they exceeded the $6,300 individual deductible. The cheapest silver plan would cost $508 a month but not start paying until a $3,000 individual deductible was met. Her son's pediatrician was not in any of the networks and that was the one medical service she felt sure her family would use.

Brown ultimately bought a $256-a-month Assurant Health plan for her son, sold outside the marketplace, which covers his pediatrician and unlimited office visits. She and her husband have decided to forgo coverage for themselves, even though they may face a tax penalty of $700.

"I can’t afford the affordable health care," she said. "I don't know anyone in this area who can afford it, and I do pretty well in life."

ROBERT, TEXAS:” Policies bought before the law was passed were “grandfathered in” and can remain in place, she said.

But that apparently doesn’t lock in the cost of premiums or deductibles, said Robert Kecseg, an investment adviser in Lewisville. Kecseg, 61, said he bought a plan before Obamacare took effect. But the insurer that provided the coverage went out of business.

When he went to buy new insurance, he found that the cost was much higher. He had paid an annual $10,000 deductible before 2012. Now he pays double.

“It’s pretty spectacular,” he said.

The Kecsegs also faced a medical emergency this year that proved expensive, he said. In May, he suffered facial paralysis and had to be rushed to a hospital during a family reunion in Las Vegas. The emergency room care cost more than $3,000, he said.

“We’re paying it off over time,” he said.

Kecseg says, for example, that his wife is being charged for birth control. “My wife says she’s had her uterus removed, so we’re not really likely to have need for that,” he said. “But we’re going to pay for it.”

JOHN, PENNSYLVANIA: I pay for my family's insurance and had a plan that fit the family well. $2,500 deductible and $533 a month. Last year, I tried really hard to get on the Obamacare site and after probably 10 hours of trying finally got a quote. The results weren't good. $1433 a MONTH for bronze coverage with a $5000 deductible. I continued with my $533 a month plan this year because I renewed it last December, but just got a letter saying my plan could not be renewed. I'm now facing coverage that will likely cost almost 3X as much with a deductible twice as big. How is this affordable coverage? The President's promise of being able to "keep your plan" is just not true for me and never has been. I continue to be happy with my pre-Obama plan but bureaucrats claim to know what's best for me and my family. I strongly disagree.

FRED, CALIFORNIA: I am self-employed and had a modest but workable policy for my wife and two kids paying $350 a month or $4200 a year. The best we found this year under Obamacare was a Cigna policy at $1200 a month with a huge deductible. I have a small business and don't qualify for any subsidies [As if I would want them], so our premium went from $4200 to $14,400 or an increase of 342%, hardly affordable. So, we're part of a medical sharing program and we're paying the FIRST $5000 of our own medical expenses.

We've been knocked in the teeth by OBAMACARE.............not to mention the loss of freedom and the government coercion.

CAROLYN, KANSAS - CBS News has confirmed millions nationwide will be losing their current insurance coverage. That's because it doesn't meet the new minimum requirements under the Affordable Care Act. There could be thousands of Kansans in that total.

The letters started going out last month, telling Kansans their insurance policies will be discontinued at the end of the year.

"I'm self-employed," said Carolyn Perry. She runs a day care out of her home. "So I need the coverage cause anything can happen at any given time."

She's among those the Affordable Care Act was meant to help."But the premium that I'm paying now is twice as much as what it was when I first started paying it," she said. Perry buys her own health insurance. So far, she's keeping it.

The top line numbers of Obama Care have all been a disaster. But it is the personal stress and burdens on real Americans which really drives home the many unfolding disasters of Obama Care.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

January, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Horror Stories From Real Life Americans

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care. To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

We will finish up this month’s review of the unfolding disasters from Obama Care with real life horror stories that the legislation has inflicted on millions of Americans across the country. It is one thing to review data and statistics that summarize the failures of the law but to hear real Americans tell their real stories of how Obama Care has negatively affected their lives, it makes it so human. As always, the source of these horrors is:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

SHIRLEY, UTAH - I think it is horrible what has happened to Medicare since Obama took office. Coverage has gone down, out of pocket expenses have gone up, they've stolen money out of our Social Security and Medicare fund that I paid into for 46 years, to subsidize the Affordable Care Act, (which isn't affordable for most people ). Doctors and medical facilities don't want to take care of people on Medicare anymore because they've cut what they will pay them now.

MARGIE, NORTH DAKOTA - As if they have not stolen enough of our SS with obamacare my insurance has really hit me hard. I was paying $70.00 for my Diabetic Insulin every 90 days, now it costs me $800.00 every 90 days for the same product.

MICHAEL, NEW YORK - Michael Kennedy, who runs two family-owned dog-grooming salons near Albany, said changes to his cut-rate insurance coverage mandated by ObamaCare had more than doubled the cost, from $132.99 to $325.92 a month per person.

And when he checked the cost of buying an ObamaCare policy instead, it was “basically the same price, or even more,” he said.

Kennedy, 46, said that he and his wife clear only about $60,000 a year from their Pink Dog Parlor and Resort business, and that paying the new, higher premiums will be “a huge challenge.”

“It’s like another 100 dogs we need to groom,” he said.

MICHAEL, VIRGINIA - About 5 years ago, I changed my health plan to an HSA through Anthem, to reduce my costs. We had just had our daughter, and the reduced plan seemed perfect in my favor. Gradually, that planned increased to 535/month by August 2010 - No thanks.

I switched to Golden Rule in 2011, and we enjoyed a 249/month plan, keeping my HSA. We have a 5k deductible. It increased yearly to 281, 317, and then 392 after adding my newborn son. Then the "Letter" came in August, something like "...due to rising healthcare costs...518/month."

The increases on my plan previously were in the 13% range, and suddenly it goes up 32% and we're in perfect health.

I scream when I hear the President say, that costs have not gone up as much as previous years...and I wonder who he's talking about. Any other plans I have investigated, just 1 in my current price range, are 10-20% higher for the same coverage, deductible, etc.

JUDY, ARIZONA - My primary care physician and 2 specialists I saw quit practicing because of Obamacare. The insurance company we had for many years increased their premiums by 60% in the last 2 years, costing $1200+ per mo. We had to change insurance companies to one with lower costs but fewer benefits...because of Obamacare.

DIANE, ILLINOIS - We got a letter from our insurance company stating that our premium for both my husband and me was going to be $1120 a month with a $12,700 deductible. This through a private company. Our policy was being cancelled. I went on Medicare in January. Prior our premium on cancelled policy was $679 for both of us. After policy was cancelled 12/31/2013 then reinstated for just my husband his premium for just him was $475.13. The reinstated policy term was to be from January til December. The old policy ran from May of last year and was to go to May of this year. So my husband's premium got increased in January and then we got a letter from insurance company stating his premium was going up again this May to $538.56. So they used the January date and the original May date to levy premiums twice. So what's going to happen next year. Are we going to get two premium increases in one year again? We are all at the mercy of this disgusting messed up law and Obama keeps changing it at will to push his political agenda.

DEAN, GEORGIA - From WTOC-GA:

Reporter: New details on the Chatham county commission's move to cut hours for over 100 part-time seasonal employees. The Affordable Care Act would require the county to pay for insurance for those seasonal employees if they work more than 30 hours a week. The county says they can't afford it

The change mostly affects summer lifeguards at the county's aquatic center. . .

Dean: We have to guard the taxpayer's money, and there's no way to fund full-time positions when only part-time work is actually needed.

MICHAEL, MICHIGAN - Insurance broker Michael Harp said small businesses, part of what's known in the industry as the "small group market," are used to seeing health insurance premiums climb about 10 percent a year, but it's never before been this dramatic. For Extreme Dodge to have kept deductibles and out-of-pocket costs at last year's levels, he said, would have cost the dealership almost 50 percent more than last year.

Harp says what is happening at this dealership is representative of the other small businesses he deals with. Businesses with 50 or fewer employees currently provide health insurance to about 17 million U.S. workers, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

He said the biggest surprise to him in how the law impacts small business clients is "how many people are losers versus winners. … There are some people who do come out ahead, but I would say the overwhelming majority, they're paying much higher rates and they have lower benefits."

Higher costs, lost of work hours, lost access to preferred doctors, the disasters just keep on coming.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Monday, January 8, 2018

January, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - The Disaster Of Single Payer Systems

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care. To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) For years we have been covering the many, many failures of Obama Care:

Insurance premiums have gone up dramatically.
Insurance deductibles have gone up dramatically.
Competition has decreased.
Policy selection has shrunk.
Enrollment targets have not come close to being met.
Millions of Americans lost access to their preferred doctors.
Millions of Americans lost access to their preferred insurance plans.
Millions of American lost access to their preferred hospitals.
Medicaid budgets in some states have skyrocketed as a result of Obama Care.
Over a trillion dollars more than expected will be added to the national debt.

But these disasters are not surprising since whenever Washington politicians get involved in an issue or topic they usually make the problem or issue worse and they usually make it worse in grand style. This is exactly what happened with Obama Care and the government intervention in our lives that it caused.

But some people think that Obama Care failed because Washington and the politicians they did not have enough government intervention in our lives and the healthcare marketplace. They yearn for the so-called single payer insurance system where government bureaucrats control ALL aspects of our personal health care.

But we have previously shown how bad and inefficient these so called single payer plans are around the world. And today we have another example of failure:

In the face of a flu epidemic in England, that country’s single payer insurance system is being overwhelmed.
People are waiting up to twelve hours just to see a doctor for a flu examination.
The British Health Service, their single payer system, is so desperate that they have cancelled over 50,000 non-urgent surgeries so that the limited and overworked doctors and other medical professionals can have their attention diverted to treating flu victims.
Things are so bad that even the Prime Minister, Theresa May, had to come out with a public apology of how bad the healthcare situation is in England today: “I know it’s difficult, I know it’s frustrating, I know it’s disappointing for people and I apologize.”

But this latest fiasco of a single payer health care system should not surprise since back in 2015, the Independent newspaper in England wrote: “The UK has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world according to a damning new report which said the nation has an “outstandingly poor” record of preventing ill health.

Hospitals are now so short-staffed and under equipped that people are also dying needlessly because of a chronic lack of investment. The verdict, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will make embarrassing reading for (then-Prime Minister) David Cameron who denied the cash-strapped NHS is heading for its worst winter crisis.

Britain was placed on a par with Chile and Poland as countries still lagging behind the best performers in survival following diagnosis for different types of cancer. The UK came 21st out of 23 countries on cervical cancer survival, 20th out of 23 countries on breast and bowel cancer survival and 19th out of 31 countries on stroke.”

“Outstandingly poor, one of the worst healthcare systems, chronic lack of investment, lagging behind the best performers in survival,” etc. Still think Obama Care did not go far enough? Still think that far away faceless politicians and government bureaucrats know what is best for your healthcare? No way either Obama Care or a single payer system is efficient or effective, reality is the proof.

2) But England’s single payer system is not the only failure in the world. We have previously reported on the failure of Canada’s single payer system to deliver efficient, timely and effective health care. For example, we have already reported on how tens of thousands of Canadians come to the United States every year because it is far easier to get timely health care in the States than it is back home under Canada’s single payer system.

The February issue of Reason magazine provided a real life example of the single payer failure history in Canada:

Joy Hataley, a doctor up in Ontario, Canada, recently had to refer a patient to a neurologist at Kingston General Hospital.
Obviously a referral to a neurologist likely represents a potentially grave and dangerous situation.
When the patient went to make the appointment on the doctor’s referral he was told it would be four and half YEARS before he could even get an appointment, never mind whatever treatment might be necessary.
The doctor was told that if this inane four and a half year waiting period was not acceptable they would try to get their patient in to see a neurologist in another city altogether.
But if the wait time was four and half years Kingston General Hospital, what are the odds that the wait time in a different city would be much shorter?

Single payer systems always result in the rationing and the delaying of receiving medical attention. If someone needs to see a neurologist, it is doubtful that a four and a half year wait is an acceptable time frame to wait from a life and death perspective. The more government intervenes in the healthcare industry, be it Obama Care or a single payer system, the worst the health care that will be provided becomes.

3) One last single payer bashing today. I have a friend whose brother moved to England decades ago, ended up marrying a British subject and living under England’s single payer system. In the fall of 2016, he became ill and was told he had cancer that was working its way through his body.

One year later, in October of 2017 he was finally scheduled for and received surgery in which the doctors removed more than one bodily organ and the parts of another organ. Fortunately, he has so far survived. But as always with a single payer system, it rations and delays treatment way out into the future. How much easier, how much less suffering, how much less expensive, and how much higher would his survival rate had been if he had not had to wait over a year to get treatment for cancer?

It is no secret that survival rates from cancer and other treatments in England is much lower than elsewhere in the world. This example shows why. More failures from Obama Care, and single payer insurance schemes, to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Thursday, December 21, 2017

December, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Medicaid Disasters and a Personal Story of Disaster

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

More than twice as many people signed up for Medicaid under Obama Care’s rules and tenets than expected.
This put tremendous pressure on state government budgets as a result of increased Medicaid expenses.
These increased expenses as a result of Obama Care has caused at least four states now having to devote over 30% of their state government revenue solely to Medicaid.
Numerous university studies have shown that despite more people being enrolled in Medicaid and greatly increased Medicaid expenses, Medicaid is not making Americans any healthier.
Many people enrolled in Medicaid still cannot get medical care since fewer and fewer doctors accept Medicaid patients so that even though they have health insurance (Medicaid) they cannot get access to doctors.
The increase in Medicaid enrollment as a result of Obama Care has resulted in decreased Medicaid funding and resources for those that were originally targeted by Medicaid, the disabled, the elderly, pregnant women, and impoverished families and increased funding for people that were never intended to be in the Medicaid fold, able bodied adults.
And recent studies now indicate that it is highly possible that the increased enrollment in Medicaid has been a major contributor to the increased opioid addiction levels across the country.

A recent National Review article followed up on the disaster that Medicaid has become under Obama Care:

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) found that 24 Obama Care Medicaid expansion states have added more able bodied, working age adults to Medicaid roles than what had ever been expected.
Those states were expected to add only 5.5 million people to state Medicaid roles but over twice as many, 11.5 million, signed up for free health insurance under Obama Care and Medicaid.
For example, Kentucky’s enrollment was 134 percent higher than the projected all-time maximum, West Virginia’s was 84 percent higher than its projected peak, and Maryland’s was 62 percent greater than state officials expected it would ever be.
These much higher enrollment totals caused Federal government/taxpayer funding to increase far beyond original estimates, estimates that were used to falsely sell Obama Care to the country and which now look obscenely underestimated.
Kentucky’s state government Medicaid expenses ran almost $2 million over budget in just 18 months and Ohio’s Medicaid expansion cost almost twice as much than expected.

The disasters of Obama Care keep showing up every month, especially when it comes to Medicaid.

2) What would an Obama Care disaster update be without a review of the ever increasing Obama Care insurance policy cost increases. According to Javier Manjarres, writing for the Shark Tank website on December 18, 2017:

Five years ago, Manjarres had a Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield healthcare insurance policy with a monthly premium of $150 and an annual deductible of $2,000.
This plan allowed him to get access to any doctor he chose to see and use.
But then he got a notice from Blue Cross that “because of the Obamacare law,”, his current plan, the plan that he liked, could afford, and worked for him, was being terminated.
The notice said he had to find new insurance via an Obama Care exchange.
Five years later, he is currently working under his FIFTH policy as a result of Obama Care (Aetna, Humana, AvMed, Blue Cross, Coventry).
His fifth and current insurance policy put him back with his original insurance carrier, Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield, with a current monthly policy premium cost of $555 (more than three times his first policy with Blue Cross), and annual deductible of $6,200 (more than three times the cost of his first policy with them), and a much more narrow list of doctors that he can use.

Higher premiums, higher deductibles, more narrow doctor networks and incredible stress fo constantly trying to find insurance. Years after Obama Care was made law, the same problems keep recurring over and over.

More disasters to follow in the coming days.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Thursday, November 23, 2017

November, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories and More

Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans do not exercise enough.
The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

The largest government single payer system in the world, the British National Health Service, recently announced that it will no longer provide non-urgent surgery to people who smoke or who exceed a certain BMI level, i.e. they are fat or obese.
The driver for this restriction is the need to get costs under control since the system is facing a severe shortage of money to spend.
Before getting medical care, obese people will have to to lose enough weight to qualify for health care and smokers would have to have not smoked for at least eight weeks prior to getting care.
Now, while these folks may have gotten themselves into these health conditions because of their actions, over eating, under exercising, smoking, etc., does it make sense to make them suffer by denying them health care when they probably need it most?
Is it humane to make them wait longer for care, quite possibly making their eventual care more expensive, more painful, and more dangerous?
Or as we discussed above, would it have been a better idea to attack the root causes of high healthcare ahead of time rather than afterwards?

Much like Obama Care, it appears that Great Britain tried to apply an insurance option against a public health problem with the net result being that root causes are never wiped out or reduced and eventually the system’s monetary resources start to cause cutbacks and rationing.

Lots of good questions that show a single payer system is not the answer to ever increasing healthcare costs. Plus, in a free country, do you want a government bureaucrat deciding whether or not you should see your healthcare needs taken care of even if you paid into that health care process via taxes for years and years?

And one final question: while you may not care if someone dies or suffers because they were denied medical treatment as a result of being overweight or were a smoker because you are not overweight or a smoker, where does the bureaucracy stop in order to be financially stable? If you are a beer drinker, a pot smoker, a non-exerciser, someone with a bad gene, who knows, you may be next to be denied medical treatment in order to save a few bucks to keep the bureaucracy functioning.

Fixing healthcare costs in this country is not going to get done by creating government bureaucracies and deciding who and what gets medical treatment. It gets fixed by addressing the root causes and treating those causes as a public health crisis, not coming up with some Rube Goldberg insurance process doomed to failure.

2) As we do with most monthly reviews of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, let's hear from real Americans who suffered some real trauma, medical and financial, as a result of the failure that is Obama Care. As always, our source for such agony is the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

Jerry - Arkansas: When Jerry Buckley of Marion bought a health insurance plan for him and his wife two years ago, he wasn’t worried about whether he would be able to keep it after new regulations took effect under the federal Affordable Care Act.

“I didn’t pay any attention to that because the president kept telling you, this won’t affect you if you like what you have,” Buckley said last week.

A few months ago, Buckley received a letter from Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield advising him that his plan does not comply with new standards taking effect Jan. 1 under the health care law. Buckley was told that he and his wife could stay on the plan through the end of 2014, thanks to an extension allowed by the Arkansas Insurance Department, but after that they would either be rolled over into a plan with triple the monthly premiums or they would have to shop for another plan.

Plans that were in effect when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010, are exempt, but the Buckleys are among millions of Americans who bought plans in the individual market that are not grandfathered in because they were purchased after that date.

The issue is giving more ammunition to opponents of the health care law who have also been sharply critical of the myriad technical problems surrounding the roll out of insurance marketplaces, including breakdowns in the national national website built to provide information and take applications for coverage.

Critics say President Obama’s repeated pledge that people who liked their insurance could keep it were at best misleading, as some Americans — estimates range from 7 million to 16 million — are on insurance that cannot continue to exist in its current form under the Affordable Care Act.

Supporters of the law say the people in that group will end up with fuller coverage, and many of them will be eligible for subsidies to help them buy insurance through the new insurance marketplaces.

But Buckley, whose income makes him ineligible for subsidies, doesn’t see an upside to switching. He said he likes his current plan, which has a $400 monthly premium, a $7,500 deductible and 100 percent coverage after the deductible, plus 80 percent coverage for dental and vision services.

He said that if he switches to the most closely comparable plan available through the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, his monthly premium will increase to $600, his deductible will increase to $8,000 and he will have only 70 percent coverage after the deductible. Dental and vision coverage are not included but can be bought separately.

Buckley would gain some new benefits, such as coverage for maternity, mental health and substance abuse services, but he said he and his wife, who are middle-aged, neither want nor need those benefits.

“Our plan was custom-designed for our lifestyle,” he said. “To sit there and mandate that every plan has to have maternity coverage in it is absolutely ridiculous.”

Barbara, New York: said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.

Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.

Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.

Kent, Nebraska: We had our long time blue cross policy cancelled because it was not good enough for Obama care.

The policy we got offered cost us 25% more premium and increased our deductible from 5000.00 year put of pocket to 12,500.00 out of pocket.

It had to include crap like birth control and maternity which 50 year old people do not need. To apply for a subsidy we had to give out all of our personal financial data to lord we do not even know who.

Fred, California: I am self-employed and had a modest but workable policy for my wife and two kids paying $350 a month or $4200 a year. The best we found this year under Obamacare was a Cigna policy at $1200 a month with a huge deductible. I have a small business and don't qualify for any subsidies [As if I would want them], so our premium went from $4200 to $14,400 or an increase of 342%, hardly affordable. So, we're part of a medical sharing program and we're paying the FIRST $5000 of our own medical expenses.

We've been knocked in the teeth by OBAMACARE.............not to mention the loss of freedom and the government coercion.

Sky high increases in premiums and deductibles, lost coverage, forced to pay for coverage that is not needed, and loss of access to favored doctors and hospitals: the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More disasters sure to follow next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Sunday, May 27, 2018

May,2018, Part, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Broken Mediciad System, Higher Costs and Lower Quality, and Trump's Simple Yet Elegant Solution

Monday, February 19, 2018

February, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Americans Being Really Screwed by Obama Care

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

January, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Horror Stories From Real Life Americans

Monday, January 8, 2018

January, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - The Disaster Of Single Payer Systems

Thursday, December 21, 2017

December, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Medicaid Disasters and a Personal Story of Disaster

Thursday, November 23, 2017

November, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories and More

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